My Memories of Phillies Baseball at Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium
Veterans
Stadium opened in 1971; a multipurpose stadium that seated over 70,000 for
baseball and football games. Considered
state of the art at the time, it boasted two electronic scoreboards that could
make cartoonish faces to represent the players on the field, and incite the
crowd to cheer after critical plays. AstroTurf served as the playing surface, following
the trend of time. The Vet also almost
became a dome, as Philadelphia craved the honor of hosting a Super Bowl one
day.
But
Veterans Stadium was to be more than just merely the new steel and concrete home
for the Phillies and Eagles. It was
meant to be an entertainment extravaganza!
Bill Giles, who eventually became the President and part-owner of the
Phillies, was hired in 1970 to fill the seats in the cavernous stadium. The Phillies hired Giles because of his
success in Houston in putting together wildly entertaining promotions. The Phillies hoped he could do the same for them.
One
of Giles’ innovations, which he hoped would excite the fans to become more
involved in the game, was something he called a “Home Run Spectacular.” And what was this “Home Run Spectacular”? Well, that is probably best described in
Giles’ own words, which he gave to the Inquirer in 1970:
When a Phillie hits a homer,
Philadelphia Phil will appear between the boards in center field and hit a
baseball. It will travel toward the message board in right-center and strike a
Liberty Bell. The bell will glow and its crack will light up. The ball will
continue and hit little Philadelphia Phillis in the fanny and she will fall
down. As she falls, she will pull a lanyard on a cannon and the cannon will
explode. After smoke and sound effects, a Colonial American flag will drop
down. Then my dancing waters will come into play to the tune of “Stars and
Stripes Forever.”
Ah,
the Seventies! A time before blatant
sexism was universally considered bad.
Indeed, hitting Phillis in the fanny was not the only chauvinistic feature
of baseball at the Vet. Enter the “Hot
Pants Patrol.” These were the female
ushers hired to escort fans to their seats and wipe the seats down. The Phillies hired attractive young women for
this role, outfitting them in the style of the day, short pants that exposed
most of the thigh, called hot pants.
Lest you think wearing short pants helped to keep the young ladies cool during
the hot and humid Philadelphia summers, their uniform included knee-high
plastic white boots; boots which were notorious for being sweat-inducing on a
hot, summer’s day.
Of
course, to be fair, there is not much of a difference between the “Hot Pants
Patrol” of the early 1970s, and the Hooter girls stationed down the foul lines
in Clearwater today whose main purpose, other than to be eye candy, is to
retrieve foul balls, and give them away to deserving fans, usually adorable
children seated nearby. As an aside, the
Phillies currently hire young ladies with athletic skills, such as softball experience,
to serve as the ballgirls at Citizens Bank Park. The Phillies hold annual try-outs and
advertise that the modern ballgirls are meant to be role models in professional
sports for young girls.
But
back to the “Home Run Spectacular,” unfortunately, this novelty was built on a
budget. On the Vet’s opening day, April
10, 1971, Phillies third baseman Don Money hit the stadium’s first home
run. As the spectacular went into
motion, the Liberty Bell did not light up, and the smoke from the cannon was
delayed by a few minutes after the home run.
By the end of the season, the “Home Run Spectacular” was dismantled due
to the obstructed view created for Eagles fans.
Giles’
flare for promotions, however, reached beyond the home run display in
centerfield. A trip to the Vet had the
potential to become quite a spectacle. There
was the Great Wallenda, who wowed fans between games during a double header in
1972. A 67 year old circus performer, the Great
Wallenda silenced the crowd by walking a tight-rope strung across the top of
the Vet, without a net. As if that were
not enough, Wallenda performed a head stand in the middle of his feat.
Game
day attractions included Kiteman, who after several years of failed attempts,
finally made to home plate as promised. Cannon man shot himself out of a cannon
in centerfield to home plate. The tight
rope promotion was repeated by cycle man, who rode a motorcycle across the
Veterans Stadium sky with a young lady dangling from a swing below the cycle. There were elephants, ostriches, the world’s
largest kazoo band when fans were given a kazoo and asked to play “Take Me Out
to the Ballgame,” not to mention parachute man and rocket man.
Of
course, Veterans Stadium’s greatest attraction was the Phillie Phanatic. While the Phillies had the mascot twins of
Phil and Phillis, they failed to ignite the excitement of the hometown fans. So on April 25, 1978, the Phillies unveiled
the lovable green-feathered creature who hailed from the Galapagos Islands, the
Phillie Phanatic. Originally portrayed
by intern Dave Raymond, the Phanatic won the hearts of young and old alike with
his on-field antics and outgoing child-like nature. The Phanatic may not have been Tommy Lasorda’s
favorite, but as a kid I can remember waiting what seemed like forever just to
get a kiss from the Phanatic’s snout when he visited a local carnival. The Phanatic’s run has been so successful
that not only has he spawned knock-offs, but he remains the greatest mascot in
all of sports even after 42 years.
Indeed,
being a kid growing up in the late seventies and early eighties, Veterans
Stadium was the place to be. Initially,
you could bring food and beverages into the stadium. So Dad would often fill up a cooler of
lemonade, plop down $2 per ticket for 700 level seats, which he affectionately
called the nose bleed section, and take my sister and me, and sometimes our
cousins, to experience the spectacle that was a Phillies game. Often, we went on the weekend give-away days,
when we would receive a special hat, Phillies batting gloves, a bottle bat, a
backpack, a rain jacket, all just for being fourteen years or younger and coming
to the park. We would watch the Phanatic
dance on top of the dugout, perform with the grounds crew, or just walk through
the stadium, with an entourage of young kids following him. If we were lucky, we would see the Bull, Greg
Luzinski, launch a home run into the upper deck.
Eventually,
Mom and Dad sprung for lower level seats, the 200 level, right behind third
base. We bought the Sunday season plan,
which meant we could watch Mike Schmidt put on a clinic on third base. The concourse behind the 200 level had
the better food and souvenir stands.
There was also the original Wall of Fame, where the Phillies would honor
a player from the past from both the Phillies and the Philadelphia Athletics
with an annual ceremony and a plaque. It was
that Wall of Fame that taught me that there had actually been a World Championship
team that once played in Philadelphia, before the
Phillies beat Kansas City for their first title in 1980.
As
partial season ticket holders, we were eligible to buy World Series tickets in
1980. In fact, if we had bought the
tickets, they would have been Game Six, when the Phillies finally won the World
Series. However, being a working class
family, my parents only had enough money for either World Series tickets or a
trip to the Poconos during Christmas vacation.
They presented the choice to my sister and me by emphasizing how the
Phillies had choked for three straight years and likely wouldn’t even make it
to past the National League playoffs. So
of course my sister and I chose the Poconos.
All we got from the World Series was a special edition program a friend
of ours bought when she attended Game Six.
As
a teenager, I would bring a friend to the stadium, and we took great pride on
our efforts to walk around between the 700 and 600 level in order to be part of
“the wave” in as many sections of the Vet as we could. When I came home for the summers while
attending college out of state, I recall driving on I-95 South with my best
friend, listening to the game on the radio.
When we heard that the game was tied in the seventh inning, we both
looked at each other, realized that the Phillies opened up the Vet around the
eighth inning, and instantly decided to drive to catch the end of the
game. The game went fourteen innings
before Dale Murphy finally won it for the Phils, which meant we had six innings of free baseball from the 200 section behind first base.
And
while John Kruk might not be happy that I remember this, I saw him when he was
first traded to the Phils, playing leftfield.
He caught a fly ball for the second out of the inning, but had lost
count. He began to trot towards the
infield as the runner on second realized Kruk’s mistake, and dashed in to score
a run before Kruk could get the ball to home plate.
In
1993, when I was attending graduate school in Washington, DC, I begged one of
my professors to allow me to take an exam either early or late because my
grandfather had gotten tickets to Game Five of the World Series. My professor relented, and as a result, I
witnessed the most incredible game of what had been an explosive series, as
Curt Schilling threw a complete game 1-0 shutout in face of possible
elimination by the Blue Jays.
Veterans
Stadium hosted the All-Star Game twice.
In 1976, while celebrating the country’s bicentennial, five Phillies
made it to the mid-summer classic: Schmidt, Luzinski, Boone, Bowa and
Cash. In 1996, relief pitcher Ricky Bottalico
was the lone Phillies representative. But
I was in attendance to witness the incredible performance by Norristown native
Mike Piazza.
The
Phillies threw two no-hitters at the Vet.
The first was by Terry Mulholland, who beat the San Francisco Giants 6-0
on August 15, 1990. The second, again
coming against the Giants, was thrown by Kevin Millwood on April 27, 2003.
I
remember when they changed the seats from the beautiful multi-colored arrangement
to the drab all-blue set-up. I remember
when the Phillies wore all-blue hats which clashed with their red pinstripes
for home day games. I remember the hideous
all-red “Saturday Night Special” uniforms from 1979, which were retired after
one game after the Expos drubbed the Phils 10-5. Inexplicable, the Phillies brought those hideous
uniforms back for one game, which was Picture Day, forty years later, which dissuaded
me from attending the game. The result
was similar; a loss in pathetic fashion, this time to the Braves 15-7.
By
2003, the good times at Veterans Stadium had run their course. In fact, the Vet probably stayed around
longer than it should have. The
AstroTurf has deteriorated and became dangerous, particularly for football
players. A nationally televised
Army-Navy Game saw a fence give way, sending a number of cadets plummeting to
the field, injuring nine.
The
stadium was imploded on March 21, 2004, with the help of the Phanatic and Greg
Luzinski, to make room for a parking lot next to the new Citizens Bank
Park. Bronze markers show where home
plate and the pitching mound used to stand.
It took only four years for the new stadium to host a second World
Championship. And while CBP is a
beautiful, state of the art facility, the Vet, with all the time I spent there
as a child and young adult, will continue to have a warm spot in my heart.
By: William J. Kovatch, Jr.
By: William J. Kovatch, Jr.
References
Berger,
, "Nine Injured in Fall When Railing Breaks at Veterans Stadium,"
Daily Pennsylvanian (December 7, 1998).
Hooper,
Ernest, "They Say the Vet Stadium Turf Is Hard as Concrete — Maybe That's
Why Last Week It Was Treated Like Piece of Philly Highway,” St. Petersburg
Times ((December 28, 2009).
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